Sleeping With the Same Man, Washing the Same Dishes

Dear friend,

Even though I’d taken the care to “put the kitchen to bed” last night, wiping off counters, emptying the sink drain, vacuuming the floor, and setting out fresh hand towels, I still came up to find a sink full of various mugs and plates. Teenagers. If I had to guess, it looked like someone cooked a few chicken sausages and made a mug of hot chocolate around midnight. The fresh hand towels were already streaked with cocoa and the remnants of ketchup had dried to the bottom of the kitchen sink.

Still. Coffee was in hand.

One cup down, shared with Stuart mostly in silence today, I headed off to shower. I was in a bit of a funk today — clean hair helps move these stuck emotions along I find. Everything is better with clean hair and armpits. I often use my shower time to pray and I’m not sure if this is good or bad, but I do it nonetheless. It’s quiet time for me, though I often offer my prayers up audibly. The Lord hears them. I’m sure Stuart does too, but as our marriage works, he already knows them all anyway. And he already is well aware that I talk to myself, and the Lord, out loud and often. We pray together too.

Hair lathered in foam, I peeked out of the shower to discover that much to my dismay, the littles had indeed removed the special (i.e. clean and nice) towels from my bathroom that are in fact, never supposed to leave my bathroom (under severe threat from a mama who likes hers clean and dry). Knowing they were most likely upstairs in a pile on their dirty bedroom floors, I tried to remind myself that “this too I will miss when they’re grown” and shouted out at Stuart to please grab me a towel from the dryer. He was tucked in at the small table in our bedroom, tending to his digital work, before heading to the summer sheep pasture with the boys that’s a few miles down the road. During their morning excursions to the summer pasture, Owen practices driving the big truck on country roads and they move sprinklers and grain the animals each morning. They come back after twenty minutes eager to tell me stories of how each individual lamb is growing, who did something cute today, and who received the most attention or nibbles from the small flock. Today was no exception. But in Stuart’s haste to tend to the watering chores at hand, he forgot my towel.

I used a wash cloth.

Still, I managed to (eventually) dry off and slip on some blue linen trousers — the kind that are soft in the waist and thus soft on the 40 year version of myself — and a clean tank top. It’s finally summer, it’s finally warm, and I welcome the light and heat on my shoulders. I let my clean hair air-dry but put on some mascara and concealer. “Hey beautiful.” I said to myself in the mirror. “You look great today.” It’s a new (fun) little game I like to play with myself where I remind myself what is true. The woman in the mirror listens to me — and I like when she hears nice things.

I made the bed that I have shared faithfully with my husband for 17 years (thankfully, we had upgraded the mattress during that time) and put in a load of his laundry from mowing the lawns on Saturday morning (another task he has done faithfully for the 17 years we’ve been married). I had to guess on a few of the “half-in, half-out” laundry pieces, strewn close enough to the hamper to make me think they were dirty, but not placed inside the hamper in a finalized plea to be cleaned. Smell test. They all got put in the dirty pile.

I finally came upstairs. A signal to my family, to the world, that help has arrived. My life for theirs, truly and fully, just as Christ lived and died for me. It’s also time for coffee #2. At the top of the stairs, I was greeted by two little chicks that my youngest daughter, Juliette, had saved from an inattentive mother. She very kindly, and gently, finished peeling them out of their shells and brought them inside to care for after they were abandoned by a hasty new mother. I could see that she’d upgraded their living quarters to a much larger box, one lined with my electric heating pad and a lovely hand towel from my collection. Both of my lovely things were now soiled with chick poo, which is both sour and hard as concrete when dry, but I kept walking, making a note to deal with it later. Maybe after coffee #2, but probably not until after coffee #3.

I still haven’t cleaned them.

The day ticks on.

Despite the “Do Not Disturb” sign posted on my home office door, there were no less than nine interruptions today during a one hour business call. I made a mental note to have a sit-down conversation with my wonderful crew of people, so intertwined and tangled in my life that I cannot always see where mine ends and theirs begins. It is what I hoped for — to be within arms reach of them, to be their constant and ever-present mama. My heart’s desire, my most lovely reality… so long as they remember to not cross the office threshold during times of work. (Cause that makes me cray-cray.)

Stuart, after returning from lunch with a co-worker (did I tell you Stuart took a job at our church?), seemed to vanish. I needed to run a new monthly calendar by him — lame, but we all need our systems to stay on top of this insane reality we live in — and this was my best attempt to make sure that nothing fell through the financial cracks. A printable, monthly checklist that I can physically hold and mark. Call me old. But I need it to be on paper. I want to touch it and mark it and see the pages month-after-month line up in my notebook. I want to physically check a box and stick a paperclip on the corner. Those who live digitally deny themselves such pleasure in picking out colors and pens and stickers and highlighters to delight them, in my humble opinion. Plus, I do like to work on my handwriting. I want to be an old, eccentric grandmother who speaks Italian and has beautiful handwriting and a wonderful collection of paperclips. Anyway, I set out on a quest to run my new little checklist by Stuart, only to find him deep in a closed-door conversation about puberty with one of our children. God, that you would be so kind to give me such a man! A man who loves his children so well and desires that they never feel alone, never feels without answers, is never left to guess alone. But I didn’t have brothers and thus, know very little about boy puberty, so I quickly shut the door and told him we’d discuss my choice of spreadsheet colors later.

And before I forgot, I sent him a quick text to please look into a few mystery charges that had come out of our bank account.

It’s only the afternoon — there is still supper to be made, laundry to fold, and a home to tidy for tomorrow. If I am lucky, I’ll have time to reset my little office sanctuary before the labors of tomorrow. A few desk plants keep me company these days (as if I needed more company with nine-interruptions-an-hour) and they could use a bit of water. There’s an empty coffee cup to wash.

This is an ordinary day for us here at the cottage. To some, it may seem boring. I sleep with the same man, over and over. I correct and love my children, over and over. I consistently show up to work not because it gives me some grand fulfillment, but because it is good, honest work that blesses us and provides for us. I wash the dishes and sweep the floors. But God has been so faithful in providing for our needs. We have food. We have one another. We have peace in our souls.

Throughout our days, we do a thousand small actions and movements, over and over, that say far more than words could express.

It is faithful, steady, and ordinary life.

And it is the greatest.

Love,

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